Friend, thy page says “Pleasure,”
Friend, my page says “Pain.”

But what is the end of our reading?
O it is the same!
Knowledge each will be heeding.

Friend, thy path is pleasure,
Friend, I go with pain.

What is the end of our going?
O for each the same:
Ourselves we shall be knowing.

Friend, thy food is pleasure;
My bread and meat are pain.

What is the end of our living?
For each, for each the same!
Deep sight it will be giving.

I wondered, ever wondered,
Till my full mind cried, “Take
The great things of thy wonderment
And plan and build and make.”

The world was for my wonderment:
O world, art not complete,
That such as I should plan and strive
To lay aught at thy feet?

O wonder of the wide world
Read first at Eden-gate:
‘Last creatures of creation
Their final worlds create!”

“Where hast thou been, thou grey-beard Time,
For this full many a year;
Art thou not tired, thou stiff old man,
With running far and near?”

He leaned upon his rusty scythe,
And shook his hour-glass sands,
And pointed to his worn-out shoes,
And to his sun-browned hands;

“Lord bless you, master, no,” said he,
“I've been upon the go—
I've lost my reckoning—but about
Six thousand years or so;

“And what with mowing this and that,
And weeding here and there,
If I should tell you all I've done,
Perhaps 't would make you stare.

The tree we plant will, when its boughs are grown,
Produce no other blossoms than its own;
And thus in man some inborn passions reign
Which, spite of careful pruning, sprout again.
Then, say, was I or nature in the wrong,
If, yet a boy, one inclination, strong
In wayward fancies, domineered my soul,
And bade complete defiance to control?
What, though my youthful instincts, forced to brood
Within my bosom seemed awhile subdued?
What, though, by early education taught,
The charms of women first my homage caught?

Teach it me, if you can,—forgetfulness!
I surely shall forget, if you can bid me;
I who have worshipp'd thee, my god on earth,
I who have bow'd me at thy lightest word.
Your last command, “Forget me,” will it not
Sink deeply down within my inmost soul?
Forget thee!—ay, forgetfulness will be
A mercy to me. By the many nights,
When I have wept for that I dared not sleep,—
A dream had made me live my woes again,
Acting my wretchedness, without the hope
My foolish heart still clings to, though that hope
Is like the opiate which may lull a while,

Now that the seas and winds so kind are growne,
In our advantage to resigne their owne;
Now you have quitted the triumphant fleet,
And suffered English ground to kisse your feet,
While your glad subjects with impatience throng
To see a blessing they have begg'd so long;
While Nature (who in complement to you
Kept back till now her warmth and beauty too)
Hath, to attend the luster your eyes bring,
Sent forth her lov'd Embassadour the Spring;
While in your praise fame's eccho doth conspire
With the soft touches of the sacred Lyre;

O I have made for myself one whole happy day!
Grief did not steal a morsel of it away.
I shut all the doors of my soul to pain—
He came and knocked at my doors in vain.
And tears, I flung them down in the deep
Sea where I lulled my sorrow to sleep.
And my sighs, I turned them to doves, all my sighs,
With gray breasts and dreaming eyes.
For I said, “I will be mistress of one perfect hour;
I will have peace and I will have power;
And I will let the hawks of my fancy fly
And measure the distances in my soul's sky.
And I will give my heart room—

My dearest, fairest hope,
(O life's full bitter tide)
Had his Gethsemane last night
On the lone mountain-side.

Then out upon bare Golgotha
How great and sure he died.
At the right side of him and left,
Two fears were crucified.

I am all alone in my little room;
There is no one to see me but the Gloom
O' the eve and the Dark o' the night,
And the eyes of my Fears that affright.
If I smile there is no one to know,
If I weep my tears will not show,
And others are lying alone even so.

There is no one to know save old Pain, who will creep
From cot to cot when the dark hours sleep;
He'll be gathering up each sigh,
And each little lone heart-cry,
And every strong hope that doth sink,
And each doomed desire, I think,
To mix therefrom our common drink.

O Jesu, how my soul goes forth
To be a friend to thee,
Who had no friend to know thyself,
Who ever walked lonely;

And whom the ages lonelier make,
Upon thy lifted tree.
O Jesu how my soul goes forth
To be a friend to thee.